so that was a hecking lie
I also continue to hate Anduin and how increasingly mopey and sad he gets. Where’s my MVP kid from Mists who mindcontrolled people? Why does Blizzard continue to portray characters in this lame way?
Alleria with her cringe Xalatath “rivalry” and her constant main character syndrome spiels in the story (because Blizzard thinks redoing the Tyrande arc on her is a 10/10 idea) also grinds my gears.
I’m also confused about Hallowfall lore. So 2k years ago some Arathi folk and some High Elves left EK and travelled across the sea to a continent and founded a new Arathi Empire there?
Yeah. Then their expedition set off a decade or so before TWW based on a vision the Arathorian Emperor had and they ended up at Khaz Algar, after which something magical ported their entire armada to Hallowfall.
Blizzard stop taking writing beats from Wyrmrest Accord rpers please.
This is marginally a half-step above Moon Guard’s Scarlet Queen of Lordaeron.
so let me get this straight, this second/new/what? empire continues to exist to this day, yet nobody has heard of it until now, so it’s probably ooOooOOOO shrouded by the mists (i guess the burning legion never cared about it for instance) and yet upon hearing about it, not a single character reacts with a “wait what the hell are you talking about, arathi was a bunch of ruins 20 years ago”?
lol, lmao even
It does indeed come across as being heavily influenced by the sort of ‘server lore’ expected to come out of American role-playing servers.
I recall rolling my eyes when I found all of this out for myself, but I’ve gotten used to it by now. If I have to guess, it’s probably an attempt to expand the setting and put a new human nation into the setting as all of the existing ones have already been explored.
A more cynical take is that this is/was a part of the new narrative’s effort to rewrite and rebuild Warcraft in their own image, full of superior versions of stuff that previous devs had already written. Their centaurs are cooler, their dwarves are cooler, their nerubians are cooler, even their humans are cooler, or so they want to believe.
Anduin actually did!
Also, I like the Arathi Empire, personally! Love the new lore in TWW D:
So what do we make of oppressed orcs, gentlemen?
Can’t oppress orcs enough.
I mean its conjecture but we know it’s in the sea that’s dividing the Forbidding / Veiled Seas (aka the ‘Storming Sea’ now i guess). This is also the location of another ‘lore drop’ from the Uldaman books (the same that referenced Khaz Algar) as ‘Avaloren’ which is probably the continent where the Arathi are.
Why this has never been known is idk, no one goes into that patch of sea? The Burning Legion… forgot maybe? It’s sloppy worldbuilding for sure, which was one of Blizzard’s actual decent things they could do back in the day, until they either fired their old writers or others quit.
It is definitely Danuser-esque in formulation, and he probably had some sort of input on it before he got the boot, TWW was in production after all. The whacky ‘ooo cosmicism’ brand of Danuser redditor tier explanation style hasn’t QUITE come through as strong though, which I would put down to Metzen likely looking over what was being made for them and putting the focus on more personal interaction with the player and lore characters (Ie Anduin and Faerin’s back and forth).
That’s essentially been the lore for the Forbidding Sea since Vanilla. I believe that’s also why the Hallowfall fleet was nearly lost, and why they can’t simply fly back the way they came.
What would be cool is if the Empire mentioned their fight against the Third Invasion some day. The Second only touched the Lordaeron sub-continent and northern Kalimdor, while Arathor didn’t exist during the First.
Am I making excuses for Blizzard’s writing? Possibly! Are these ideas I’d like them to visit soon? Absolutely.
The Legion invasion in the ‘Legion’ expansion was practically global, yes focused on Suramar and its environs but the Legion had its forces everywhere from Ulduar to Pandaria.
All it would take is a throwaway line along the likes of “oh yes the great demonic horde came from the sky one day but the emperor zapped them with his holy fire.”
I think it’d be funny if the Arathi empire xpac comes along and we just sail into a barren fel wasteland because the legion did land there and won. No emperor, no steampunk cities, only fel spires.
Funny but not going to happen, the Legion have had their mandated expansion, we have to go through each of the various cosmological forces you know?
-If- we ever explore this Arathi Empire, I’m hoping there’s a bit of this here and there, like scarring of the land, husks of villages where the Fel is being contained. Proof and signs that the Legion also attacked here, but lost their momemtum after the heroes of Azeroth brought the war to Argus and were subsequently destroyed to the imp.
But it is a very, very positive sense of hopefulness to expect Blizzard to add such a detail, however minute it may be in the grand scheme of things. It’d help rope the entire concept into Azeroth as a whole a lot more though.
Dear god the toxic MAXIMUM EFFECIENCY crowd have found normal dungeons. Excuse me and my first time playing mage in half a year self while I do not keep up, or do the expected damage in the damage meters at level 72 while the tank pulls an entire dungeon floor 
What’s even better these folks are from Argent Dawn! Which makes it even more fun, one of 'em might read this 
Steelrune the level 72 mage sends you love, I’m happy to have nothing to do with you going forward 
It’s fine, they’ll start learning how to pace themselves from M0 onwards where pulling more than one trashpack will destroy even the tanks.
Peace in our time
Valmarec the now level 80 mage encourages you to pull the entire dungeon so that he can Arcane Surge Phoenix them out of existence. Also because pulling huge packs is super fun